Re: Design H-MAG2 (Hypothetical Massive Action Game 2 (H-MAG2))

I'll preface this with I did not play much MAG, but I agree fully one of the first things would be the controls.

That said, and while I generally do not share my best ideas and preferences online, I can say the first thing I would look at before even attempting design changes for a sequel to MAG would be where it can sell. Yeah, I know, 'evil corporate' blah, blah, but that could be why it didn't get a sequel (/*_*)/ You can't have your ideal game/franchise if no one else wants to play it or has a more popular alternative that results in not selling enough copies to make a profit.

So, I guess you could say how I would design the game would depend on how to sell it and keep the franchise alive for the fans. I wouldn't post any details on a forum if I were to have an idea.

Disclaimer: I don't work in video games, just a guy on the internet sharing his thoughts.

Poo, no fun.

No, seriously, I get it though. For me, this is less about making an actual game and more about the fun of doing a design exercise like this. Even as the industry matures as a business, I'm sure there'll always be people who will do it just for the love of designing games first and selling will be secondary to them. I'd like to think I would be one of those people.

But this game, H-MAG 2? The ideas here would only be 1% if it were ever to become MAG 2. The technical know how for the networking of that many game clients alone would be a tremendous effort and that comes even before all of the cool ideas anyone could come up with for the actual gameplay.

This isn't advice, just how I see it. I don't see any reason to worry about putting ideas on a forum. Chances are, no one here is going to want to put in the effort necessary to make anything out of them any ways.

But if someone out there does... well, in this case anyways, then I'd get to play H-MAG 2. How cool would that be?

Re: Design H-MAG2 (Hypothetical Massive Action Game 2 (H-MAG2))

I'll preface this with I did not play much MAG, but I agree fully one of the first things would be the controls.

That said, and while I generally do not share my best ideas and preferences online, I can say the first thing I would look at before even attempting design changes for a sequel to MAG would be where it can sell. Yeah, I know, 'evil corporate' blah, blah, but that could be why it didn't get a sequel (/*_*)/ You can't have your ideal game/franchise if no one else wants to play it or has a more popular alternative that results in not selling enough copies to make a profit.

So, I guess you could say how I would design the game would depend on how to sell it and keep the franchise alive for the fans. I wouldn't post any details on a forum if I were to have an idea.

Disclaimer: I don't work in video games, just a guy on the internet sharing his thoughts.

Poo, no fun.

No, seriously, I get it though. For me, this is less about making an actual game and more about the fun of doing a design exercise like this. Even as the industry matures as a business, I'm sure there'll always be people who will do it just for the love of designing games first and selling will be secondary to them. I'd like to think I would be one of those people.

But this game, H-MAG 2? The ideas here would only be 1% if it were ever to become MAG 2. The technical know how for the networking of that many game clients alone would be a tremendous effort and that comes even before all of the cool ideas anyone could come up with for the actual gameplay.

This isn't advice, just how I see it. I don't see any reason to worry about putting ideas on a forum. Chances are, no one here is going to want to put in the effort necessary to make anything out of them any ways.

But if someone out there does... well, in this case anyways, then I'd get to play H-MAG 2. How cool would that be?

I'd say I'm a hobbyist designer so I fall into this category (I do my best to design shooter 'stuff' as a hobby so noone is paying me for them). Don't think because I think about the business side it's all about the money. You get a few degrees in a business field and it changes the way you approach things.

If you want to talk about the gameplay, I don't have a ton of experience with MAG to go off of, but fixing the TTK, controls, and the like would be something I'd have to familiarize myself with MAG more to do. I can talk for days about Battlefield and I can generally hang talking about CoD mechanics, but MAG just never felt 'good.' The controls were not as sharp as they should have been, the weapons felt hit or miss for me (maybe it was the bloom speed, max spread, etc, who knows without the data from the game).

Art design, I would probably be more than ok with keeping and going further towards the FP character being a mix of what looks like CS and Battlefield. Embrace a lower polygon count (or whatever it is called) for some areas like forearms and focus on enhancing the iron sites. LESS foliage and less of anything that could be done away with to even slightly improve performance. MAG never seemed to run smooth for me either. It always felt like overpromising and underdelivering.

Sure networking with a huge game would probably require setting tons of light/render/etc areas and crafting maps in specific ways to avoid being shot from an invisible player (not rendered or visible for some reason). This is something I know very little about technically, but it seems like it would definitely be a factor when you claim to have 256 players per server (there has to be some trick to it, right?). Thing is and IMO, it's not the 1% of the game design changes we are talking about that will matter most. It is how they are ticked and tied together to create an experience. That's why I said I would start where I mentioned in my previous post. I think MAG tried to do too many things instead of crafting their own unique experience.

Again, I'm just a hobbyist and if I did have some good ideas fleshed out, I would not share them publicly. That won't change. Now I do share some of the more outrageous thoughts occasionally or the basic stuff everyone comes up with.

BTW, the shielding ideas I read earlier, while cool, would be terrible. Imagine the clan stacking and pub stomping that would happen. Or imagine if the damage was shared how much rage and trolling would happen due to players running out and getting blasted. You can't force people to play a certain way, they'll just find a new game.

Re: Design H-MAG2 (Hypothetical Massive Action Game 2 (H-MAG2))

Hm, okay, now interested in thinking hypothetically if H-MAG 2 would sell.

The way I picture it playing out would be something like... there's the original MAG fanbase to lean on, but that number is pretty small when compared to what I think this game would cost to make and maintain down the line.

The hypothesis behind H-MAG 2 is that while there are many first person shooters in the market, few emphasize team play and none emphasize team play to the detriment of solo play.

Looking at closest competitive products, Battlefield's suppression and spot systems are great team orientated elements but easily ignored if a player wants to lone wolf it. On the other hand, the lone wolf rarely has the influence in a match to turn the tide alone.

So then the task would be to find out whether or not that would be something that a lot of people would be interested in. Is the player looking for that feeling you only get when working together as a well coordinated team not being served in the first person shooter genre.

In the meantime, does it hurt to think about how H-MAG 2 could best serve that hypothetical audience?

On the topic of forcing players to play a certain way:

Can't you? Shooters basically force people to shoot at each other. Can't you make the game you want to, ask people to try it your way and hope that they'll like it, assuming the market research has been done and it shows that some people out there will like it and others who are used to the way other shooters are done can try it and maybe they'll like it too?

As an aside:

Judging by how MAG seems to be generally known today for being a somewhat mediocre game, I'm not sure MAG 2 would be a good title, unless there was some way of giving people hands on time to prove that MAG 2 is so much better, assuming that it is.

Re: Design H-MAG2 (Hypothetical Massive Action Game 2 (H-MAG2))

The only way in which "MAG died for a reason" would explain why a sequel wouldn't do any better is if people were completely uninterested in the concept, as a sequel in games often allows for improvements to be made in execution.

Re: Design H-MAG2 (Hypothetical Massive Action Game 2 (H-MAG2))

If you're wanting oppinions from the old MAG community, you should probably post a link to here over on the "[Info] Mag forums" (or something like that) thread. I don't think the old fans have really left that thread much since Sony ruined the forums...

First off, this^.

I only found this thread today.

Trioptical wrote:

I don't think MAG felt as good as other shooters, but I still played a few hundred hours of it. Still, I think H-MAG2 should feel more solid or something.

MAG's core mechanics worked. Any problem that may have arisen was probably because of lag and the game had virtually no lag at first.

The game was released was sandwiched between MW2 and BC2, two popular franchises. Not only that, but it also suffered a little from patch 1.03 which introduced random bullet spread (RBS) which was widely unpopular.

Lastly, SOCOM 4 and SOCOM Confrontation were shutdown on the same day as MAG, a Zipper game and a Zipper inspired game. That's no coincidence. Sony was trying to cut off all existing relations with the now non-existant comapny Zipper.